


hungry men must eat

by pr_scatterbrain



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M, Russian Mafia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-23 17:22:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14938617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pr_scatterbrain/pseuds/pr_scatterbrain
Summary: Maybe they found him when he was too young. That is what Evgeni thinks sometimes, but he isn’t sure if it’s the truth. Sometimes he thinks he found them. That he was always going to find them. That feels more honest. More true. But it isn’t the truth either.Evgeni isn’t much of a liar.He isn’t much of anything until a growth spurt at fifteen suddenly makes him worth watching.





	hungry men must eat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dangereuse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dangereuse/gifts).



> To Dangeruse - I loved all of your prompts, and once I started reading about the connections between ice hockey and the Russian mafia I ended up writing this. It ended up being a bit different to your prompt but I hope you enjoy it <3<3<3

_"I'd rather have crap and great stuff in my life, than just be in the middle with no great stuff and no crap."_

– Pavel Bure.

_“…when there's a chance to score, I've never seen a guy hungrier."_

– Ray Whitney on Pavel Bure

 

 

_2013-2014_

 

Sidney slips into Evgeni’s car as he’s leaving the bar. It happens without comment; his stride matches Evgeni’s and then he’s sliding into the passage seat. He’s done it before, but not for a while. Not since they gave a name to what’s between them. Evgeni smiles at him. His can’t help it.

“Drink too much?” he asks, letting himself look at him.  

That was one of their old excuses. Usually it was Evgeni who used it, bringing it out after wins. Nothing was better than winning with Sidney. Being side to side on the same line was a thrill that never got old – a thrill made better by when Evgeni convinced Sidney to come home with him.

Now Sidney shrugs, unreadable.

Sometimes he still is like that. He has his tells though. After so long, Evgeni knows them all.

Yet they’re at the traffic lights when Sidney turns to him.

“Why did we take a photograph with a member of the Bratva?”

And –

Sidney breathing is even, but his hands are not still; flipping his new iPhone over and over.

“Sid –” Evgeni starts to say.

Yet Sidney speaks over him. His tone unchanged. “That’s what your friend Vikolaf is, isn’t he? That’s what Pat said.”

The traffic light is red. Sidney is looking at Evgeni evenly, steadily. In the darkness of the car, the green in his hazel eyes is lost. Evgeni opens his mouth. But again, it’s Sidney who speaks.

“I need you to tell me the truth.”

 

_before_

_1999-2000_

 

Evgeni grows up hungry.

He grows up fighting for every inch, every minute on the ice, every goal, and every position on every single roster.

Maybe they found him when he was too young. That is what Evgeni thinks sometimes, but he isn’t sure if it’s the truth. Sometimes he thinks he found them. That he was always going to find them. That feels more honest. More true. But it isn’t the truth either.

Evgeni isn’t much of a liar.

He isn’t much of anything until a growth spurt at fifteen suddenly makes him worth watching.  

At fourteen he isn’t even on the reserve list when the Ural regional junior team rosters are announced. He is small, furious, and there are no scouts who bother to look twice at him. He’s still in the Metallurg hockey school. His coach even likes him. Most of his teammates too. But it’s not enough. They don’t count. Not when he thought this year might be different. It eats at him. After practice he trails after his brother who is tall, taller than their parents and somehow graceful. Denis is in the Metallurg hockey school too. A few years separate them. It feels like a world to Evgeni.

“Next year,” Denis promises when it is just them walking to the bus stop together. 

Evgeni flinches.

Denis always knows, always sees so clearly what Evgeni wishes he could hide.

There is talk that Metallurg’s Sergey Vitman may be chosen to coach the Ural team next year. He’s always liked Evgeni – always noted his determination. Maybe then Evgeni might be selected. Evgeni needs to be selected. So many of his teammates dream of playing professionally for Metallurg. So many want that with all that they have. Evgeni wants that too. He does. But –

“I know,” Denis says.

He does. As much as he can, he does.

Evgeni still ducks his gaze away. Still feels something inside him twist.

 

 

At night, Evgeni dreams. Sometimes he wakes up breathless. Other times he wakes up on the verge of tears.

His name. His name. His name. His unknown name.

 

 

_2000-2001_

 

There are no private trainers or articles written about him. Not that year, but during the following one he has a growth spurt. It comes in uneven fits and starts. His knees and shins ache. His back, his arms. All of him. He grows into and out of three parts of shoes. Of skates. He wears his brother’s old gear when he can. His new gear when he can’t. He sleeps with his hockey stick still. At night his hands find the grip and his heart isn’t a calm thing inside him, but he sleeps like he can’t get enough of it. He doesn’t think he can.

At fifteen there are scouts.

They don’t come immediately, but they come.

They summon him to Moscow. To International meets where he wears red and white. (Not white and red). The hockey is faster. Harder. Better. It makes Evgeni better. It makes him want more.

The world grows around him.

From competing for ice time against his teammates, he competes for attention and not just against Alexander – Sanja – Ovechkin. People call him a prodigy; they do the same for the Canadian, Sidney Crosby.

He is a teenager when he first meets Sidney Crosby. Someone else points him out.

If they were on the ice, Evgeni thinks he would know Sidney on sight. However they are in a hotel lobby and although Evgeni is wearing his team uniform, Sidney isn’t. He at the side of a group of people. Teammates, maybe. He is picking at the fabric strap of his duffle bag. He doesn’t seem to notice what he is doing. Though no one else seems to be taking much notice of him.

They don’t like him, Evgeni thinks.

People like Alexander – Sanja. Maybe so does Evgeni.

Sanja talks of the NHL like it is a given, like he can see it all in front of him. He talks and people listen.

 

 

In Helsinki, Evgeni and his teammates had watched footage of Sidney in darkened rooms. There the coaching staff had tried to unpack his play, to break down his strengths and weaknesses. No one had managed it. Not when it mattered. When Evgeni goes back home, he looks Sidney Crosby up on in his school library. The things he is doing look impossible, even when caught on film.

Evgeni is doing things. His name is appearing in papers and on scouting reports and his ranking is rising. Sometimes after practice he is asked to stay later, to talk with the coaching staff. He never knows exactly what to say. Often he thinks he says the wrong things, even if they make his coach smile.

“As long as you listen,” his mother tells him. “That is what is important.”

Evgeni nods.

He isn’t a child, but sometimes he feels like one when she draws him close. Her soft, fuzzy scarf itching a little against his face and the perfume he bought her at the duty free section of the airport flowery on her skin. She’s worn it every day since he brought it home for her.

His mother hands on his face bring him back to her, to his family. “My good boy,” 

 

 

_2001-2002_

 

Evgeni doesn’t know money until he is sixteen.

There are only a few options for people like him born in the time and place he is. There were less a few decades earlier. Everyone knows that, maybe especially his brother who touches Evgeni’s hands when they become fists.

Denis doesn’t ever say it is just a game.

He touches Evgeni’s fist; his white knuckles and Evgeni lets him. But only for a moment.

Anyone else and maybe Evgeni would rear back and take a swing. Inside himself, he rages.

It is never just a game.

It’s never a game in the KHL.

Maybe that is how they find him so young.

There is money in the KHL.

Evgeni isn’t used to it. And that shows. He spends too much, at first. Drinks. Cars. A girl with a diamond ring on her finger that Evgeni didn’t buy.

“The ring comes off,” Evgeni jokes.

It’s a line he picks up from someone else. Something said with a laugh in a locker room or on a team bus or by someone talking about him behind his back. Maybe something said by the girl in question as she demonstrates that fact. Over time he thinks he will forget the original source (he doesn’t).

The ring does come off.

The marriage too, in a way.

 

 

Money in envelopes. Money in bank accounts. Money with his name on it.

Rubles and Euro’s and eventually American dollars. 

 

_2006-2007_

 

In Pittsburgh Evgeni slides his credit card to bartenders with ease that is practiced.

He might be a rookie here but it doesn’t show. Not like Jordy who is so green with it that he can’t help it, or even Brooks who is at ease with everything except when it comes to cars that are fast and big. The hulking pieces of steel and gasoline he turns up to practice with gleam with newness. Maybe even taste, though Evgeni isn’t completely convinced. Evgeni’s own runs towards the fast.

“Cars or women?” a Russian journalist asks. Jokes maybe. 

They say they are a Russian journalist. They have a lanyard around their neck to prove it. They organised to interview Evgeni in Montreal, when the Penguins play the Leafs.

Sergei is there.

He is being interviewed with Evgeni, rather than acting as his translator. Still. He is the one to answer the question. Or not answer it.

They played together before. Back at home. Back in Evgeni’s hometown.

Now Evgeni lives under his roof and Sergei feels like family – a best friend, a brother – to Evgeni.

“They know your name,” Sergei tells him afterwards. “They don’t get to know anything else.”

Not easily, he means.

He came to America during the worst of it, when people would turn up outside of Oleg Tverdovsky’s family home and threaten his parents. Or when Alexei Zhitnik was taken under a long beach boardwalk and beaten – then extorted. Or. Or. Or.

Evgeni grew up while that was happening a world away.

He grew up in the aftermath. And now it isn’t like that anymore. Instead it is like this.

Or it is something else. An autograph. Invitation to a VIP section.

America is a funny place.

Everyone wants to be a Kennedy.

From bootleggers to president. Isn’t that the dream? The American dream? The Russian dream?

“Not mine,” Evgeni says the next time he sees that interviewer, and he isn’t even lying.

But who is listening?

 

 

And then there is Sidney.

Sidney who Evgeni knows will understand him; who will know him like no one else can.

Sidney, who is and isn’t exactly what Evgeni hopes.

 

 

Despite Sidney’s media training, there are parts of him that aren’t photogenic. He isn’t sure what to do with himself when he isn’t on the ice. It often shows more than he would prefer. He picks at details that don’t matter and can only really hold a conversation when it’s about hockey.

There is an A on his jersey, and one day there will be a C.

Evgeni watches him but probably not enough because somehow within a short space of time Sidney ends up sitting next to him at bars and smiling at him when he arrives at practice. He launches into conversations that Evgeni can’t really understand and –

Evgeni has a mobile he can’t use here. It’s filled with numbers that he can’t call and don’t call him.

It aches. Sometimes. He prefers not to think about it.

In the locker room, noise washes over him. The guys are good. For the most part. The older guys laugh as easily as the younger ones when he teaches Russian cuss words and learns English ones. Sidney doesn’t so much. But Evgeni wants that. Evgeni wants so much more – wants everything. Mostly the cup, but the Pens aren’t anywhere near it this season. Or any of the previous seasons.

 

 

Fast cars, fast women, gambling, drinking, drugs –

And Sidney, who will mind Evgeni’s jacket when the Penguins go out drinking.

 

 

Most of Evgeni’s heart was left in Russia, but what’s left of it become Sidney’s without either of them notice it.

 

 

_2007-2008_

 

It happens in part.

It happens at bars, when Evgeni buys a round of drinks and lets the bottle of beer he bought be the one Sidney nurses all night. It’s easy to make Sidney smile; to make him laugh. Evgeni likes achieving both. It doesn’t take much, but he likes it. 

Sidney likes order. He likes consistency.

He is hard to be around. Sometimes. Evgeni imagines he would be hard to live with. Though, when Sergei and Knesia announce their next pregnancy, Evgeni thinks about asking Sidney if he wants to share a place. Maybe rent somewhere in the city. He thinks he could convince Sidney. No one else has, but he thinks he could. If he wanted to.

It’s a running joke; Sidney living with the Lemieux’s. Sidney, the first pick babysitter in the Lemieux’s household. Sidney the extra child the Lemieux’s adopted.

It isn’t so much a joke, Evgeni thinks. Knows.

There are times, especially after the summer when Evgeni goes home (unsure if he had one), that Mario watches him.

“I know Pavel,” he says once. “And Alex.”

There are more than one Pavel and Alex in the NHL, but Evgeni goes still. They both know who Mario is referring to and why.

“You would come to us, if you needed to?” Mario asks.

Or maybe he doesn’t ask.

Evgeni isn’t sure. English is tricky even at the best of times and – it isn’t a joke that Sidney lives with the Lemieux’s.

It is a neat solution.

A very neat one.

Sidney is a once in a lifetime talent. There is a reason Mario invited him to live in his home, with his family. There is a reason Mario is so happy he stays. Yes, he and his family love Sidney. Yes, their home is his home. Equally though, Sidney in their home means he is safe and sound. Under their roof, Sidney is far away from all the people who could do him harm; the people who could use him, the people who would get him into trouble.

“You can always come to me,” Mario tells Evgeni before he goes home at the end of the season. “I’m always here for you.”

He means that. He does.

But he is a few years too late for Evgeni.

 

 

Fast cars, fast women, gambling, drinking, drugs –

Hungry men must eat.

 

 

Sidney has careful hands. When Evgeni moves out of the Gonchar’s home, he throws a housewarming party in the house he buys  – or just a party. Any excuse, he thinks. Or maybe just another excuse.

Upon arrival Sidney takes his hands out of his pockets to hug Evgeni. It’s brief, awkward thing. The way he holds himself doesn’t leave much softness. But as the night passes, some of the tension eases away.

Evgeni sees him laugh with Flower and Vero. 

A little bit later, Evgeni brings him a drink.

“I have one,” Sidney says.

The one he has is warm and mostly finished. He’s been nursing it for a while. This time distracted from finishing it, not using it as a prop.

Evgeni has careful hands too. Clever ones. It isn’t difficult to swap drinks with Sidney. A slight of hand long ago learnt. It doesn’t impress Sidney though. His eyes track the move easily.

Evgeni likes impressing him.

Later, when almost everyone has left, he likes pinning Sidney against his unmade bed and kissing him. Against his lips, Sidney is smiling and Evgeni feels like he’s gotten away with something brilliant, something fantastic. 

 

_later_

_2013-2014_

 

Time moves forward.

Evgeni plays.

He wins. He loses. Mostly for the Penguins. Sometimes for his country.

It changes over time.

An Instagram photo. An arm thrown over someone’s shoulder. Or a retweet. Or a place on a charity board. Those look especially good.

 

 

In the summer, one summer after the Penguins finish the offseason without a cup, Evgeni helps a family he sees on social media. Their child is sick. They can’t afford treatment. The sum needed is paltry, a fraction of Evgeni’s last paycheck for the cover and feature with Russian GQ. Evgeni - helps. He can help, so he does.

Afterwards his agent calls. Afterwards, when it is made public, Sidney calls. 

“Geno,” he says, his voice soft. 

And Evgeni can’t let him say what his agent said. “I can help.”

He could and he did. Not everything has to be complicated. Not everything has to have red tape or strings attached.

”There are other ways to help.”

Sidney helps. Sidney has the kindest heart; he gives his time and attention, not just money. Over the many years Evgeni has known him, he has done so much and he cares so much. His foundation and the charities he works with do so much good and have changed so many lives for the better. 

Its different, in Russia, he wants to say. But he isn’t sure how to say that, even to Sidney who understands Evgeni better than anyone. It is different though, here. Or maybe it is just different for Evgeni. It’s hard to know, sometimes. It’s hard to look away from the people who find him, who come to him needing help. Those people - they have no one else to come to, no where else to go. 

“Please,” Sidney says. 

His voice undoes Evgeni. 

He undoes Evgeni.

So Evgeni founds a charity.

His Russian agent hires people.

They come with recommendations.

They come with connections.

“That’s the way it is,” Alex says, when they see each other in Moscow.

Alex being Ovechkin.

There are always Alex’s in the NHL. In the KHL.

Not many are as clever as Evgeni’s Alex. Not that he has been Evgeni’s lately.

There is a deal. They have a deal.

Alex has his own connections. Mostly with people who have very nice offices and who dress their wives in haute couture. They like being photographed with Alex as much as their wives like being seated in the front row of Chanel and Dior shows in Paris. 

They like Evgeni almost as much as they love Alex. 

“Small town boy,” Alex teases. “Still so provincial.” 

They both came from so little, and did so much. With the Sochi Winter Olympics on the horizon, so much more is expected. There is so little room for mistakes. They are the best of their generation, but they must prove it. They must. 

 

 

Lines blur. It happens so often Evgeni is used to it.

When he was fourteen, Pittsburgh would have felt a world away from Magnitogorsk. Now it is only one flight away.

A flight that is taken, every now and then.

It starts with a friend – a friend of a friend – who is in Pittsburgh. Who visits Evgeni at practice. There are game tickets. Evgeni has the front office put them aside. His friend could buy them. Could buy a box. But Evgeni has the front office set aside tickets. But those are details.

Isn’t there a saying about the details? Evgeni can’t remember it offhand.

 

 

Lines blur. It happens. Evgeni should be used to it.

Only then a friend asks Sidney for a photograph.

And Evgeni finds himself laughing. “Why do you want a photo of his ugly face?”

And his friend is laughing. “Sidney is the best hockey player in the world!”

“I thought I was,” Evgeni says.

He is still laughing. His friend is still laughing. And Sidney is smiling in that way of his. It’s funny, maybe, to him. Maybe just Evgeni is. Somehow he always seems to smile easily around Evgeni.

The Penguins have practice. It’s an open one, but Sidney leads by example. Only he also bends over backwards for fans, especially ones like Evgeni’s friend. Evgeni keeps the joke going, easily poking and prodding his friend. Yet Sidney stays, happy to have an arm around his waist and lean close for a fan selfie.

And it’s nothing really. A laugh. A joke. And it’s nothing. Nothing at all. Only Evgeni wants to delete the photo his friend ends up taking the moment he takes it. Wants it never to have been taken in the first place.

Within the hour the photo ends up on Instagram.

His friend tags Evgeni. He writes something about the two best hockey players in the world.

And it’s nothing. Innocuous. Forgettable. Sidney doesn’t have any idea. Despite everything, he avoids social media with a determination that is notable. Probably it’s unspeakably sensible of him.

Other than a few thousands likes, nothing much happens.

That is that.

 

 

That is that, every time. 

 

_now_

_2013-2014_

 

“Why did we take a photograph with a member of the Bratva?”

And –

 

 

There was a phone call, back at the bar. Evgeni remembers because Sidney had stopped paying attention to him. Sidney excused himself.

Evgeni was talking to Kris when he notices that Sidney as returned.

“What’s up?” Kris asks.

Sidney shrugs. “It’s nothing.”

And –

 

 

(“Why is there a photograph of you with a mobster?” Pat asks.

Sidney blinks.

He thinks he’s misheard Pat.

He says that. Or he says something else.

“Beg your pardon?”

Pat exhales. He doesn’t repeat himself. Instead he says that he assumed it was a random fan photo.

“I take a lot of photos,” Sidney says, which is what Pat also said – more or less.

He signs a lot of autographs. He meets a lot of people whose names he can’t be expected to remember. Only...)

 

 

Evgeni opens his mouth. He closes it.

Sidney is looking at him, calm. Calm, like he stares down the media. Evgeni can’t read him.

The traffic light is red. Still red.

“What?”

It feels like flashback to his rookie year when all people wanted to talk about was if everyone had guns in Russia and if he knew anything about the Russian Mafia. 

It was a joke then.

It was something that made him laugh: that was what they thought Russia was? 

Here, now, Sidney is within arms reach. His posture is easy, but there is something in his eyes that has Evgeni turning away.

“What the hell,”

“Pat – ” Sidney starts to say.

Evgeni doesn’t want to listen.

“He’s not Bratva,” Evgeni says.

The light changes, going green. Evgeni accelerates. His hands grip the steering wheel. 

“What the fuck, Sid,” Evgeni says. 

Because what the fuck? 

“What did Pat say? You listen to him?” Evgeni asks. 

With a glance in his mirrors, Evgeni changes lane. Then again. 

Sidney’s breathing is steady. Practiced. Because it is, among other things. 

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Sidney says instead of answering. 

It’s what he does in front of journalist. It’s neatly and tidy and politely done.

“It’s nothing,” Evgeni tells Sidney.

Maybe he even means it.

“You don’t understand,” Evgeni tells Sidney.

He doesn’t.

It’s different in Russia. American’s always are so black and white.

Sidney is Canadian. He doesn’t say that, but - 

“You know what I mean,” Evgeni says. Only he doesn’t say that. English ties him up in knots, never more than now when it is important Sidney understands.

“It is ok,” he adds, but it doesn’t change the expression on Sidney’s face.

Sidney has stopped flipping his phone in his hands. 

Evgeni concentrates on the road. 

He can’t when Sidney asks him a volley of questions; if he’s ever been asked to throw a game - if he ever accepted money or was threatened. If Vikolaf knows about them. If anyone else knows about them.

Evgeni swears.

”Vikolaf is friend,” he says. 

He is an old friend. He is a businessman. He is widely known and respected. He wouldn’t -

They are on the highway. Sidney did this on purpose. He chose now, to say all of these things, when Evgeni can’t walk away. But he can change course. So he does; driving Sidney home. 

“It’s nothing,” he tells Sidney again. 

Evgeni isn’t calm. Isn’t neat or tidy or even polite. He doesn’t want to look at Sidney. Not if he believes those things about Evgeni. 

He can’t turn his back and end this conversation but he can leave Sidney on the curb outside his home. 

He says Evgeni’s name. He says other things. Evgeni doesn’t listen. He doesn’t want to listen.

Evgeni asks him to get out of his car. 

“Not want to fuck tonight,” he tells Sidney, meanly. “Not if you think these things about me.”

 

 

Evgeni goes home. 

There is something awful in his blood, under his skin. It thrums and thrums and - he can’t believe Sidney would think those things, say those things. 

He tries to sleep but he can’t. He stops trying at about two am.

He debates contacting Vikolaf; debates asking him to delete the post. He writes a text. He rewrites it. He doesn’t send it. Instead he goes in Instagram and scrolls back through all of Vikolaf’s post until he finds the image. He had liked it, at the time. He sees his handle listed underneath the image.

He remembers the day it was taken. He remembers joking in Russian while Sidney smiled at them - at Evgeni. He remembers not wanting the photo to be taken. He hadn’t been quite able to figure out why at the time. 

He doesn’t get much sleep.

An ugly mix of anger and bitterness propels Evgeni through the next few days. Sidney doesn’t try to bring up the photo or Vikolaf, but it doesn’t matter. Evgeni doesn’t want to look at him. It is obvious because Evgeni is obvious. He wear everything and it is only a matter of time until he is called up on this. Whatever this is. 

Anger gets Evgeni through practices, two games, and one fight which he doesn’t exactly win but doesn’t lose either. They do lose that game while he is sitting in the penalty box. It’s humiliating. The Penguins have made all kinds of trades. This season is meant to be their season. Yet despite the caliber of players wearing black and gold uniforms, they can’t hold it together. Sidney does his best, but he is only one person; one player on the ice.

With Sochi on the horizon there is more press than usual after games, and they want more of his time between games. The Penguins PR team rein in the more pointed questions, but Evgeni is a Russian player going to the Russian Winter Olympic Games at a time when Russian politics are making headlines.

He is a story before he opens his mouth to answer a single question.

It’s been awhile since he had a translator at his side, but he also wishes for one. He tries his best to choose the right words, but he isn’t sure if he does. He isn’t sure he can. 

Across the league Evgeni knows other Russian players are facing the same scrutiny. More, maybe, in Washington. The Penguins go there, and it’s a good game. A clean game. Afterwards, Evgeni goes out with Alex. Alex brings his Russian teammates, most of whom have been Evgeni’s teammates on various national teams in the past. The NHL is a small world if you are an European player, smaller still if you are an Eastern European one. 

There is a good, strong Russian community in Washington. They have a lot of mutual friends who live there. They don’t talk about them, that night, but about Sochi. 

Dima is jittery. For them, for the weight of the red and white uniform they will wear. 

Glory and fear are tangled up together for all of them, for at long as they can remember. Maybe it’s something else they have inherited from the rubble of the generation before them. Or maybe from the one before them. Or maybe it’s always been there. For Alex it is more personal. His mother won gold twice over. He and the Capitals are struggling to put together two wins in a row. Though they don’t talk about that. 

Partway through the night Alex brings up Sidney. He always does. There is something polite about the way he does, maybe even fond. 

Its awful the way Sidney seems to endear himself to people. A decade ago neither of them knew him. A decade ago Evgeni was in love with someone else. 

“A lovers quarrel? Alex asks to perceptive by half. 

Evgeni smiles. Maybe too widely. “Have you forgotten what we did on the ice? The goals?”

Alex shakes his head. He is smiling though and of course he knows better. He always does. That was part of the reason they fought the way they did. 

 

 

(When Evgeni returns to the hotel he is tipsy and he smells of cigar smoke and warm spices.

He passes Sidney’s hotel room door. It’s not late, but there is no light slipping out from underneath the door. 

He could be out. He could have gone to bed early. Evgeni doesn’t know.)

 

 

(Evgeni hates not knowing.)

 

 

There is practice in the morning. There is the routine made familiar by time. Evgeni tries to pay attention to the drills, to what they are working on. Yet he feels a beat off. 

Ever since they fought, Sidney walks around looked hollowed out. Gutted. 

He walks around looking heartbroken and Evgeni - 

Mafia, mob, Bratva, oligarchy. What’s the difference? 

In America criminals rob banks. In Russia, they run then.

In the 90s, criminals kidnaped players family, now they just want photos.

Only they aren’t criminals. They are the kind of people who wear suits and have beautiful homes and have connections and are the right kind of people to know. A better class of criminals. The kind of people Alex knows. The kind of people his parents know. The mayor of Moscow waived his mandatory military duty while Evgeni was stuck doing it.

There is something bitter at the back of his throat.

He isn’t a liar, but when did that ever matter? 

 

 

It is days before Evgeni is ready to talk to Sidney.

Maybe it should take longer. Everyone knows how badly Evgeni holds his anger. Everyone has been watching. Evgeni knows that. He’s seen how the locker room has shifted around him and Sidney. The space Evgeni has been afforded comes with a cost. Sooner or later he will have to pay for it. Probably with an awkward conversation with Dan. But Evgeni doesn’t want to talk to him. 

“Come home with me,” he says to Sidney, at the tail end of another road trip.

They are waiting for their bags and it’s starting to get really cold in Pittsburgh. Sidney should be wearing a warmer jacket, but he never does until Evgeni makes him. Each year is the same story. 

For a moment, Sidney is still. Unmoving. Then he nods. It’s a jerky movement. So unlike what Evgeni knows of him now. It’s more like something from when Sidney was younger and so unsure. He looks unsure now, and tired. 

He still turns up to Evgeni’s home. Late.

Evgeni doesn’t know what to say; how to start. 

“I have friends,” he ends up saying. 

Evgeni has a lot of friends. He always has. 

He keeps in touch with old teammates, with old school friends, with athletes and actors and - he knows a lot of people. 

“You don’t know all of them,” Evgeni tells him, because he doesn’t. 

”Do you?” Sidney asks quietly. 

“They are my friends,” Evgeni says. Repeats. 

Sidney’s hands are in his pockets.

There is colour in his face from the wind and cold outside and the heating inside. He looks so young, and he always understood Evgeni. Right for the very beginning he knew Evgeni. 

“Vikloaf -” Sidney starts to say, but Evgeni cuts him off. 

“He is a businessman, not Bratva.”

Sidney swallows. 

He takes his hands out of his pockets. 

“What kind of business?” Sidney asks. 

And -

Sidney doesn’t move. His eyes though, he doesn’t take his eyes off Evgeni. The green and gold of his hazel eyes are more familiar to Evgeni than anything else and he feels pinned by Sidney’s gaze. And then, something shifts. 

“Okay,” Sidney says, like he got an answer from Evgeni. 

“I don’t...” Evgeni begins to say, but his voice fails him. 

The air feels taunt with unsaid tension between them. He isn’t sure what Sidney sees when he looks at Evgeni. All the anger, the bitterness, the messy and ugly fury from the days before has changed shape and now when Evgeni reaches for that, he finds something else.

”I’m not,” he says instead, trying again. “It’s not.”

Sidney doesn’t say a word. 

“You don’t understand,” Evgeni ends up saying. 

It isn’t right, but it feels as close as he can get in English.

In his rookies season with the Penguins, everyone had asked about the mafia. They’d asked if everyone carried guns and if Russia in real life was anything like it was in the movies. They wanted to hear stories of violence and ruthlessness. They wanted that. They hadn’t wanted to hear about desperation and determination - only Sidney wanted that. Only Sidney had wanted him. 

The people Evgeni knows they -

“They’re not bad people.”

Sidney looks away; looks down at his hands.

The people Evgeni knows - not the school friends or teammates or actors - but the people like Vikolaf. They just want to know him. They just want to call him a friend. All they want from him are things that are easy to give. He tries to say that, to explain what fame is like at home. How the refraction of light is prized. 

“What happens when they want more?”

Sidney is standing just out of arms reach.

Evgeni thinks of being a rookie in Pittsburgh.

Even now it’s so very easy to remember the way his heart would act when Sidney grinned at him across the ice whenever Evgeni did something clever with the puck, and the rush of happiness whenever he managed to gain Sidney’s undivided attention. So yes, Evgeni knows what happens when someone wants more. Evgeni knows first hand what it’s like to want so much from someone. Evgeni is young, maybe he is stupid, but he knows that very well. 

Sidney is it for Evgeni. 

Evgeni has known that for a while now. 

Even now, sometimes Evgeni feels like a thief, like he got away with something to be loved by Sidney. 

Evgeni knows what this conversation is. 

”I say no,” Evgeni finds himself telling Sidney. “They can’t have more.”

It isn’t a lie.

But it isn’t exactly the truth. Not the full truth. 

 

 

(Sidney is the one true thing for Evgeni. 

Maybe the only true thing.)

 

 

Sidney stays. 

There is a feeling is distance between them that doesn’t cease, but maybe eases. 

Evgeni is so happy to have him in his house. So happy that Sidney still treats it as their home.

In Evgeni’s room - their room - they stumble their way into bed. What once was so easy, now made so awkward. Yet once Sidney slides under the covers next to Evgeni, Evgeni can’t stop himself for reaching for Sidney’s hand. 

All Evgeni wants is this. 

“Geno,” Sidney says softly. 

Slowly and with care, Evgeni brings Sidney’s hand to his lips, and kisses his palm. 

 

 

During the night, they try to talk. Sidney is cautious as he asks about Moscow, and about Magnitogorsk, more so when he asks about Sochi. He can’t understand what it means to be a Russian hockey player on the cusp of representing his country at a home game. If Sidney and Team Canada lost in Vancouver it would have been shattering. Evgeni isn’t sure if a loss in Sochi will be forgivable.

“You can’t think like that,” Sidney says.

He is right, but it’s so hard to imagine winning gold when nothing short of it will be enough.

“Enough for who?” 

Everyone, Evgeni thinks immediately. Thought that is a shorthand answer. The answer Sidney is asking for is complicated. There are names Evgeni doesn’t want to share with Sidney. Once said, they can’t be unsaid. Or unknown. 

It is one thing for Sidney to be in a photo. Sidney is asked to be in dozens of fan selfies each week. Those photos don’t mean anything. They aren’t proof. If push comes to shove, they are deniable.  

“What about you?” Sidney asks.

Evgeni hesitates.

There are rumours about Ovechkin and Putin. None of them get much press in the States.

“They aren’t interested,” Evgeni says.

“That doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter,” Sidney tells him.

The oligarchy likes Alex. He’s rich enough and talented enough to mix in their circles. Yet he and his mother have taken care that he isn’t branded as one of them. It’s a blurred line. Both sides step over it more than they should. 

Evgeni never had always to help chart his course like Alex did. 

They both know powerful people. Dangerous people.

There is so much that is unsaid in Russia. So much that is simply understood. 

It’s a long time since Evgeni became someone worth watching. The choices he made along the way can’t just be undone. The people who know his name won’t let that happen. They have long memories and the don’t easily or inexpensively forget things. Things or people. 

He squeezes Sidney’s hand. 

 

_before_

_2003-2004_

  

“You can come to me,” Mario tells Evgeni before he goes home for his first offseason.

Neither of them are sure what welcome awaits Evgeni, but Mario is kind enough to make the offer before Evgeni leaves. 

It is kind, Evgeni thinks. Or it is intended to be kind. 

Mario wasn't the owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins until relatively recently. He knows though, what happened when the Penguins bought a Russian team. 

Maybe that is where it started, for him and the Penguins. Or maybe its started earlier.

 

 

Like always recognises like. 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Find/follow me on [tumblr](http://www.pr-scatterbrain.tumblr.com) if you want <3


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